I had a friend tell me around this time last year to get on Steemit. He said there was decent money to be made on here and for someone like me who not only already has a blog, but writes about a variety of different topics (book writing, publishing, travelling, motivational posts, funny posts, etc...). I didn't really believe him, but after about a month of him pestering me saying how much I was missing out I finally took the plunge, thinking there would be no harm in testing the waters, posting some of my previous travel posts and seeing what happens.
Within a week my posts were absolutely booming! I was making between 20-50 STEEM dollars per post. My rating had immediately shot up to 54 and I was making decent money. Granted, no way to access it at the time, but theoretically I had another avenue of income and it felt good.
At one point I even got featured in a Steemit magazine with a glowing review, with the reviewers saying things like, 'He literally makes me think that I can't write' and 'He is one of those writers that absolutely delights me, whilst at the same time elevating me.' Things were going great, and I was excited to be a part of this new writing community.
Link to the outstanding review that I got: https://steemit.com/steemlight/@cryptogee/steemlight-issue-1-0-the-funny-guys
But then something changed. I couldn't quite put my finger on it but the upvotes stopped coming in and soon my post weren't even making 50 cents, let alone 50 dollars. I hadn't changed my writing style at all and as far as I knew I hadn't upset the community in any way. So I dismissed it thinking that I was going through a very unlucky patch and things would eventually pick up.
But they didn't. I asked my friends and they told me a range of things that it could be (be more active in the community, comment more on other people's posts, join groups etc...) I did all this but nothing seemed to be helping. It felt very strange that all of a sudden my once highly appreciated posts were now off everyones radar.
It's now been over seven months since I made a post over three dollars. I pretty much post everyday so there's no other way to describe this other than embarrassing. I mean, I am literally a professional writer, yet not one of my last 300 or so posts have gone over the three dollar mark on Steemit. Not...one....
Recently I was speaking in one of the groups that I'm in about the price of SBD and the conversation drifted to this very topic. I mentioned to one of the guys that I'd lost hope a long time ago of ever making money on this platform again as for some reason no one cares about decent content anymore. The guy replied that content is only one of three important factors on making money on Steemit, and arguably it is the smallest factor. The other two being networking with the right people/groups and using bots.
This broke my heart. Because what this means is Steemit as a platform has now changed so much that it is no longer rewarding high quality content. It is now an easily manipulable game where people either make friends so they can upvote each other (Not make friends for the sake of making friends) or literally BUY votes (From the 'whales' who got in early, which means it is moving dangerously close to becoming a pyramid scheme). It's sad. Because this platform used to be amazing, but now with the way it is going it seems destined to fail. Because if people can't make money from good content alone and can only make money from playing the game, then new people aren't going to join; they're going to be curious, try it for a while and then get disillusioned with all the strategical voting and 'circle-jerks', then quit within a month...
So would I recommend Steemit? I already have, but I don't think I will do again. One person (
Thanks for reading. I appreciate it.
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